


Damask

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s06e15 Arcadia, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6296605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What were you thinking about?” he asked, peering into the slim drawers just under the lip of the countertop with his ever-present childlike curiosity. </p>
<p>She shrugged, picked a piece of lint off the sweater set she’d begrudgingly borrowed from her mother’s closet. “Just that it’s been a long time since I’ve lived in a house.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damask

“I almost made a rookie mistake back there,” she said, putting the blood sample in the refrigerator behind the fruit basket. 

“Oh?”

“Name-dropped the Kleins when Big Mike came over to drop off those dishes.”

Mulder looked up from opening and closing the empty kitchen cabinets and winced. “A name drop? I expect more from you, Scully.”

“We’ve been off the X-Files for months, Mulder, forgive me if I’m a little rusty.”

“Standard investigative procedure hasn’t changed that much, you forget yourself.”

She sighed, wiped her hands on her khakis. The empty house seemed to be asking to be filled up, to have its walls hung with memories again, its halls filled with echoey laughter and squeals. For the briefest of moments, the image of Mulder chasing her down the hallway flashed through her brain, the sound of her own elated shriek ringing in her ears as she tried to beat him to the bedroom. 

“Rob for Laura,” Mulder’s voice cut in, pulling her back to the kitchen, where he’d again assumed his ridiculous pose atop the counter. 

She blinked a couple times. “What?”

“What were you thinking about?” he asked, peering into the slim drawers just under the lip of the countertop with his ever-present childlike curiosity. 

She shrugged, picked a piece of lint off the sweater set she’d begrudgingly borrowed from her mother’s closet. “Just that it’s been a long time since I’ve lived in a house.”

He cocked his head. “Huh.”

“Not since I was a kid, really,” she said, part of her mind still in that distant place that was fuzzy around the edges, the place where Mulder gripped her hips tightly as he pressed her into the mattress and kissed her. 

“Me either,” Mulder said, swinging his legs. “Been in DC so long I forgot people have houses like this.”

Scully scoffed. “Well very few people have houses like _this_.”

“Yeah, how’s your friend Mike afford this place on a veterinarian's salary? Maybe there’s some sort of blood money debt ring going on here. Maybe they all owe something to the head of the--what’d they say his name was?”

“Gogolack. Mulder, you can’t be serious. And why’s he _my friend_?”

“What?”

“You said _your friend Mike_.”

Mulder shrugged. “He brought you a new set of dishes, you’ve spoken more than five words to the guy. I think he’s the closest thing you’ve got to a friend in this neighborhood.”

Scully felt herself turn crimson, mortified that she could have assumed Mulder was anything remotely close to jealous of her one-minute interaction with their new neighbor.

Mulder furrowed his brow, almost smiled. “Did you think I-- nevermind.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop and then hopped off.

“Where’re you going?” Scully said, her voice pitched a little higher than normal. She had been doing that a lot lately, snapping at him when she meant to be gentle, distancing herself when she meant to lay along the length of him. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the status quo. 

“Just gonna tinker in the garage, I promise I’ll be in by dinner time,” he called over his shoulder.

She made a face. “I could use some help unpacking, thanks for offering.”

“You’re the best, honey!” The garage door shut loudly behind him. 

Miffed, but mostly just relieved that he hadn’t finished whatever he’d been about to say, Scully got to work salvaging what was left of her broken lab equipment. A few petri dishes remained unscathed, the irony not lost on her, but her centrifuge was ruined, something they wouldn’t be happy to hear about when she got back to Washington. Heaving a sigh and shedding her sweater, she booted up her computer and looked up the address to the FBI field office in San Diego, plotting her route for tomorrow morning. The sooner she could get the sample analyzed the better. 

She felt a headache forming just behind her eyes, a thumping so loud it seemed as if it were real. Scully massaged her temples, counted to five, did some breathing exercises from the one yoga class she’d taken a million years ago… and then she realized the sound was real, coming from the garage. She hurried swiftly to the door, which she opened to find Mulder, shirtless, dribbling towards the basketball hoop he had set up cattywampus in the corner. 

“Want to play?” he asked, all muscle and sinew. She tried to avert her eyes. Oblivious, he raised his arm to wipe the sweat sliding down his temple and said, “You’ve got a pretty good chance of making it in at this height.”

Maybe Laura Petrie played basketball with her husband in the garage, she rationalized. She snatched the basketball from his hands and dribbled to the other side of the garage, the pinging of leather against cement echoing in her ears. 

“Aaaaand it’s Scully for the three!” Mulder said, his best shot at what she could only assume was supposed to be a Howard Cosell impersonation. 

Her loafers slowed her down; she chuckled at the thought that she’d probably be faster if she was wearing heels. She took a shot that bounced off the backboard, but caught the rebound and made it the second time. She thought maybe Mulder let her, but it didn’t bother her. 

“What were you going to ask me?” she asked, dribbling as she walked back towards him, only slightly out of breath.

“What?”

“In the kitchen. You were going to ask me something and then you stopped yourself.”

Mulder shrugged. “I don’t know, it just seemed like you thought I was jealous of Mike.”

“Were you?”

“Did you think I was?” He squinted in the dim light of the garage. 

“I’m not sure,” she admitted after a beat. 

“Neither am I.”

How badly she’d wanted to believe him when he told her he loved her, all hopped up on drugs after his stint in the Bermuda Triangle. But she knew it had just been adrenaline, dopamine, and a series of other chemical reactions in the body, the same ones that were causing her to sweat now in the garage. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to change out of this ridiculous outfit yet. She felt the thin cotton sticking to her chest just below her collarbone. 

“I’m gonna change, “ she said, tossing the ball back to him.

He let her walk back into the house, but she wanted him to stop her. Five or ten minutes later, when she’d changed from her Laura-clothes into her Scully-clothes, she felt him in the doorway of the master bedroom where, naturally, she’d posted up. She fanned through her suitcase, hanging up the things that shouldn’t be wrinkled, lining up her shoes at the end of the bed. She could almost hear Mulder rolling his eyes at her predictability.

“How long have we been married?” he asked her, gulping down a glass of OJ.

She shrugged. “Four, five years.”

“Which is it?” He sniffed in the doorway. 

“Four,” she said distantly, sure of her answer. “What song did we dance to at our wedding?”

“Earth Angel,” he answered almost immediately. Off her approving look, he replied, “The Penguins version, obviously.”

“Oh, without question.”

He smiled, drummed on the doorframe, and headed down the hallway, mumbling something about a shower. 

The next day after an embarrassment over dinner she will realize they never talked about how they met. She cannot fathom their introduction any other way: first his back, hunched over something small and seemingly insignificant, his dark shock of hair the first thing she’d noticed when he turned around, then his eyes. And all the while, just them, the only two people in the world.


End file.
